Monday, April 25, 2016

In the early 1990’s I took a trip to India, to visit the Ashram and experience the presence of the Avatar Bhagavan Sri Satya Sai Baba.

One of the miracles I witnessed is his ability to manifest Vibuthi out of his hands.

Vibuthi is a sacred ash which I am convinced helps to heal, transcend, and purify the soul.

I’ve since become aware that in the 1990’s Sai Baba’s Vibuthi was analyzed by a team of Russian scientists, and in their findings they could only conclude it appears to be made from a form of plant life, but one that hasn’t been discovered yet on this earth.

Knowing I was going into a place on the planet that is associated with darker/negative vibrations, I grabbed my one and only bag of Vibuthi, one that I brought back from this journey.

Climbing into the Canyon alone I set up my painting gear and lit an abalone shell full of sage, right in the space outside the gate.

I also surrounded myself with burning Nag Champa, (Satya Sai Baba’s) incense, one in each direction of the four corners.

The last thing I wanted was to be surprised by ANYTHING seen or unseen, while I was painting.

At the end of my painting process and alone in the dark, I gathered up my painting gear, grabbed my bag of Vibuthi and approached the entrance to the cave.

I opened the bag, and scattered the Vibuthi all over the ground at the base of the portal.

Walking away from the Devil’s gate it the darkness, and through the shrubs of the Arroyo Seco I peered back over my shoulder to view the Rock formation now barely visible.

This portal has mystified and intrigued many throughout the centuries, terrifying some, empowering others.

Devil’s Gate Dam is in a neighborhood of Pasadena called La Canada, in a canyon called Arroyo Seco, and is accessed by a trail where La Canada Road dead-ends.

(The devil would soon swipe the sunglasses I'm wearing.)In the background is NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), founded on Halloween in 1936 by a group of rocket scientists including Jack Parsons.

Born and bred in Pasadena, Parsons ran the only American branch of Aleister Crowley’s sex-and magick religion, Ordo Templi Orientis, from a house he bought on Orange Grove Avenue and turned into a bohemian rooming house for Order initiates.

Crowley by then (the mid 1940s) was in poor health with catastrophic dental issues and a huge heroin habit, barely scraping by in London on handouts, and willing to trade his occult figurehead status for a monthly stipend from fat cats in Pasadena.

(Crowley had visited southern California in 1916 but found Hollywood too wicked by his own demonic standards, describing movie stars of the day as “cocaine-crazed sexual lunatics.”)

Parsons’ passion beside the occult was rocket fuel and as a young swashbuckling pioneer of rocketeering helped found JPL in Pasadena and worked closely with it until J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI caught on to his darker interests and got him fired.

Parsons continued to dabble with explosives, and the occult, until he accidentally blew himself up at the age of thirty-seven in 1952, but not before forging a deep friendship with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard who in time cultivated what Aleister Crowley could only dream about: a worldwide religion with militant disciples and millions of followers. (Hubbard stole Parsons’ girlfriend and conned Parsons out of his life savings before conceiving Dianetics.)

As a kid, Parsons hung out in the canyon called Arroyo Seco (considered haunted by Native Americans indigenous to the region) experimenting with firecrackers and cherry bombs.

As an adult Parsons conducted rituals here with Hubbard, and when he took Aleister Crowley to Devil’s Gate, the master occultist pronounced it “a portal to hell.”

Following an entertaining if long-winded song and dance routine by this dandified street gentleman-poet, I ask, "Can you boil it down to a simple message?"He thinks about it momentarily and responds with one word: "Dignity."

Pasadena was founded, in the early 1870s, as "The American Colony of Indiana" by a group of wealthy men from Indianapolis who, tired of cold winters and the afflictions of such, went on to develop the West's ritziest resort town.Eventually the founders desired to establish a post office but the Postmaster General rejected the name "Indiana Colony" so they adopted the Native-American Chippewa word for "Crown of the Valley."